


Legend

by tigriswolf



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Animals, Future Fic, Gen, Grief, POV First Person, Panic Attacks, Pre-Canon, Talking Animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-24
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-10 14:37:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/467416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/pseuds/tigriswolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tortall drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Naming  
> Fandom: The Immortals Series (Tortall)  
> Disclaimer: Not my characters. Just for fun.  
> Warnings: none, really, though basic knowledge of Wild Magic helps.  
> Pairings: none  
> Wordcount: 300  
> Rating: PG

They call it madness, those humans. They don’t understand, even the ones with the Gift. They can’t see what’s really there, who she really is. They look into her gray-blue eyes and see only a girl-child with pain in her past. They don’t see _her—_

We do, though. We’ve watched her grow and come into her own. We sensed her power before she knew she was different; we could feel the catalyst in her before her mother decided she had no Gift. 

A rare kind, our girl, a rare one indeed. We all followed where she walked; we all answered her call, before she even knew she’d asked. We would choose her over ourselves, even over our children. 

She was _our_ child, one of the few left. 

They call it madness. ‘Wild magic,’ a type that takes and takes and never gives back. Magic that will never be as useful as the Gift, as Sight or weather-meddling or healing. They cannot see the true power she wields, unknowing. 

She is _ours_ , and unlike the rest, she never commands. She never takes from the world like it is her due; she requests, gently and softly, and we will give her anything she wants. She listens and hears; she sees and she _knows_. 

They call it madness because they cannot see. She sees more than any of the Gifted before her; if she asked, we would go to war for her. All of us, together, united for _her_. 

And they call her gentle power _madness_. She does not control it, or it her—she simply _is_. Where she walks, we stand in the shadows, waiting. When she pauses, we step out into the light and bask in her glow, her presence. 

They call it madness, but we call it love. We know.


	2. Rex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title: Rex  
> Fandom: Trickster Duology  
> Disclaimer: not my characters  
> Warnings: spoilers for the books, talk of child death  
> Pairings: none  
> Rating: PG  
> Wordcount: 130  
> Point of view: third

They killed his king. 

After the storm, after the boat ride, after he carries Dunevon’s body to the regents, he goes to his room and stares at the wall, thinking and planning and plotting.

His loyalty has only ever been to the king, to the little boy cursed as a Rittevon. His first and last loyalty. 

And they killed him. They killed Dunevon, and three other little ones. Children lost to the waves. 

They killed his king and hid behind magic to do it. He clenches his fists and grinds his teeth, and wonders where he can find vengeance. 

And then the memory comes to him, the one challenge he’s found—that spy who doesn’t exist, the clever Aly. 

He bares his teeth in what can almost be called a smile.


	3. untitled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title: untitled  
> Fandom: Tortall  
> Disclaimer: not my characters  
> Warnings: references to panic attacks  
> Pairings: none  
> Rating: PG  
> Wordcount: 215  
> Prompt: Tortall, Kel, flashback to Balor's Needle

Every time she goes higher than the fourth story and has to look out a window, she hesitates for just a moment, her heart pounding, her mouth drying - but she breathes out and the moment passes. 

She's a proper legend now, which is just so odd, and she'll probably become the training master of the knights soon, and very few people remember how heights once frightened her. Even she forgets, save for that moment of remembrance. 

She was so young, with the bandits, with Balor's Needle. And now, every time she visits the palace, she climbs that old tower and looks out over the world, breathing slowly. It was her first true test, it taught her so much about herself. 

Tash, one of Crown's many-greats grandchildren, lands on her shoulder, cheeping. "Yes, I know, I'm almost late," she murmurs. "Thank you." 

She slowly backs away from the window, telling Tash, "It seems so long ago now." This must be how Alanna felt, which is such an odd thing. Alanna has always been a legend, Kel's hero - and now, she has been the same for so many girls. She turns back to the window, nodding to the tower in the distance, and then hurries to the stairs because it's always so impolite, being late.


	4. untitled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title: untitled  
> Fandom: Tortall – Protector of the Small  
> Disclaimer: not my characters  
> Warnings: none  
> Rating: PG  
> Wordcount: 135  
> Prompt: Tortall, Kel/any, sweet, sweet kisses

Tobe doesn't remember his mother kissing him, so he assumes she didn't. Auld Alma wasn't very motherly either, so he isn't sure how to handle the way the Lady treats him. 

It's fair obvious she doesn't know how to handle it, either, and when he meets Lalasa, he asks her about it. 

She shrugs and then orders him to hold still while she finishes his measurements. 

(He gets sick, after the war. After they're all home safe, and the Lady isn't executed or banished for being a traitor. He gets sick and takes to bed, though he tries to fight it, and while they're waiting for a healer, him and the Lady, she washes his forehead and face with a cool cloth, and she presses a kiss to his hair, and she murmurs, "You'll be fine, Tobe.")


	5. untitled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title: untitled  
> Fandom: Tortall  
> Disclaimer: not my characters  
> Warnings: pre-canon  
> Pairings: none  
> Rating: PG  
> Wordcount: 105  
> Prompt: Tortall, Daine (pre-Immortals), while running wild with the Pack wolf!Daine remembers who she is.

She's taller than the rest of the pack, but not as fast or as strong, and water falls down her face sometimes, when she's curled up with Brokefang and the pups. She can undo traps and climb trees, and she sometimes thinks things the rest of the pack doesn't understand.

Sometimes, she remembers a human woman, a human man, and Cloud (who isn't a wolf, but is part of the pack) tells her, when she describes them, that they're her family, those humans. 

Which is silly, of course, but she still remembers them, and she still misses them for reasons she can't begin to know.


	6. Test

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title: test  
> Fandom: The Protector of the Small: Squire  
> Disclaimer: not my characters; just for fun.  
> Warnings: spoilers for Squire  
> Pairings: none  
> Rating: PG  
> Wordcount: 100  
> Point of view: third

For the entirety of his life, Joren had known this moment would come: the Ordeal. The final test before knighthood.

_You either bend or you break_ , knights had told him when he asked. _The Chamber will cut you open and make bare your weaknesses_. No one ever said more. 

He was sure in himself and he walked into the Chamber with his head held high. He would pass this test as he had passed all others and in the morning he would be a knight. 

_You either bend or you break, young Stone Mountain_ , a cold voice purred. 

Joren broke.


End file.
